Tom

Yeah, I keep debating whether I'm gonna bother with that upcoming re-release for V. Mechanically, I had very few problems with it in my time playing that game; Press Turn is one of the very few RPG combat systems I genuinely haven't gotten sick of since they've found good ways to riff on it without overusing any one rendition to death (mostly). But man, the writing just completely bummed me out. A big reason I used to enjoy Atlus games more was because you could count on different parts of the library having such well defined, distinct identities and themes. I wish the reaction to Persona's success the past decade had been to use it to shine a spotlight on Shin Megami Tensei proper as it already was, basically use that added attention to elevate it and help people better appreciate that foundation. But instead we got what I felt was a half-hearted subsuming that only paid lip service to past themes while not having particularly compelling character writing in its own right and about 50 hours in, I just called it quits despite the time investment.

If people have REALLY good things to say about that alternate route, I'll maybe consider it more seriously, but it's frankly gonna have a lot to prove for me to be willing to repurchase that game. 😩